


sings like she runs

by liketheroad



Category: Bandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-29
Updated: 2008-08-29
Packaged: 2018-02-21 05:10:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2455973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liketheroad/pseuds/liketheroad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>always been a girl!Spencer tours in a shitty van with her boys. Life ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sings like she runs

She knows it’s Ryan’s dream and she could want it just for that, but there’s a certain level of famous that will just make it a fucking thing, suddenly, she knows it. It’ll happen, one day probably sooner than she’d like or the rest of them expect, because they’re good, Ryan’s words and Brendon’s voice and Jon’s song structure, even Spencer herself, keeping the the beat to all of that - they’re really fucking good and before long they’ll start to buzz and then all of a sudden it will be a big fucking deal that the drummer in 504 disco is a girl. 

Maybe she could want it more, maybe it would seem worth it, worth that and the bullshit and dealing with press and internet haters and all that shit, if there was the same desperation in Ryan's eyes there was three years ago, even one year ago. But it's already gotten them out of Vegas, is the thing. They're out. Past that, free. On the road in this crappy van that's become home like home should really be, a place where Ryan can feel safe too. Where he can be territorial and ridiculous, and feel secure enough to be both, even if it's just about a two foot space in the back bench of the van. They have Brendon and Jon now too. The band used to just be Ryan and Spencer, for so long it was the dream they shared and that kept Ryan going, until the day they met Brendon in a fucking Hot Topic, for gods sake, singing along to the MCR song playing over the store speakers and doing it fucking well. Ryan, being Ryan, walked right up to him and started interrogating him about his music influences and favorite songs, and Brendon had almost bubbled over with excitement, seemingly over the fact that anyone was willing to talk to him about such things. Brendon's answers had been enough even to pass Ryan's ridiculously specific and sometimes arbitrary standards, and more than that, he'd smiled at them like fucking sunshine, too bright and real to be contained, and Spencer had found herself unable to resist smiling back. Ryan, for his part, was good at trusting Spencer's instincts, if not always his own. Then they were three. 

Another year of practicing in Spencer's garage while Ryan half-heartedly went to University and Brendon fought increasingly with his parents, and then finally, like their fucking miracle pill, Jon Walker. Jon with his shaggy hair and effortless charm, easy smiles and kind eyes. He melted Ryan's defenses like they were nothing, like they applied to people that were outside of something Spencer couldn't remember explicitly inviting Jon to join, only to find him a part of it anyway. Fitting too well, too naturally, to say anything about. He made Brendon sing when he was happy and not just when he was sad and needed to forget, needed to remember something good. Made him rejoice again, use his voice for that. And he made Spencer feel relaxed, a rare and singular talent, made her feel like she wasn't the only one taking care, wasn't the only one who saw the kindness and brilliance behind Ryan's defensiveness and the bravery and depth behind Brendon's aggressively exuberant exterior. With Jon they felt like a real band, felt complete.

So they're four now, and they're out of Spencer's garage, out of Vegas. They've left it behind, and with every moment they spend together on the road they become new people, recreating themselves into whoever they want to be, whoever they make each other.

Because they've gotten that far, have that much, Spencer feels like it's okay to be wary, to resist change of any kind, to go beyond what they already have. What they have might just be a van that breaks down every few hundred miles and a cd with pretty nonexistent distribution beyond what they themselves schlep from gig to gig in said crappy van and try to sell at their shows, but they're living their lives on their own fucking terms and they're doing it together. It's hard to see what else matters, when they already have all that.

 

Spencer's pretty sure she's always loved Ryan. Like, the kind of cliched loved-you-before-I-met-you kind of love. It seems right, anyway, thinking about it that way. Maybe it's just because she has a hard time remembering herself before she knew Ryan, and has no ability at all to remember a time she knew him that she didn't love him. It's not particularly dramatic or tragic or any of that. Ryan is her best friend, has been since the first day of the first grade when they were all outside for recess trying to make friends and she caught a group of older boys jeering around a tiny huddled thing that turned out to be Ryan. She wasn't quite their size, but she was the oldest in her family and as such had developed a fundamental objection to things smaller than herself getting picked on. So she's done what was instinct - marched right in there and punched the one who seemed in charge right in the stomach. She'd gotten called a cow and pushed to the ground for her trouble, but they'd walked off after that, and the look of slightly amazed gratitude Ryan fixed on her was all the victory Spencer'd needed. She'd basically made it her life's purpose, after that, to keep Ryan looking at her that way.

It's like that, for her, that's how she feels about Ryan, but it's been around too long to really be much of an issue. Ryan loves her as much and as best as he can, all the ways he knows how, and that's more than good enough for her. He's not good at trusting himself in most areas, but sex maybe most of all. It's too much like other kinds of touches he's afraid of, twisted up like that in his mind. So much that she knows Ryan would probably call himself gay if he would call himself anything at all, but in the mean time, what they have, the love they share, platonic or whatever you want to call it, is something special and better than most people get, so Spencer doesn't often feel the need to complain. They share personal space like they're just extensions of the other, have slept in the same bed, or now, van, practically all their lives. They trade small touches and light kisses to foreheads, cheeks, and Spencer manages most of the time to keep the heat out of her gaze, to leave more room for the love.

Maybe it's a little fucked up, or she could see how people might think that from the outside anyway, that she fell headfirst in love with Brendon almost on sight but didn't in anyway stop loving Ryan, but that's how it happened. Brendon just fit with them, is that thing. He filled a place between Ryan's caution and Spencer's aggression towards the outside world at large, made a bridge between they two, but also between them and the world, helped them begin to see there might be places for the three of them to go out into it together. He made Ryan even lovelier, bringing the pink to the edges of his cheeks, making him laugh surprised and real. That alone made Spencer's heart flutter ridiculously in her chest, but Brendon had jokes just for her too, songs and smiles and sneak attack hugs, and of course she fell. Quick and hard and with no hope of getting out of it.

Brendon's not as easy to love as Ryan, if loving Ryan can ever really be called anything like easy. When Brendon got kicked out, over some combination of wanting to be in a band and wanting to have sex with dudes, he threw himself into both pursuits with an alarming dedication. Spencer had sent Ryan after Brendon in the clubs because it wasn't her space and maybe it wasn't quite Ryan's either, but at least he had more of the parts Brendon was going after. Enough of those, and simply being himself, being RYAN, to get Brendon home, bring him back to them. So Brendon and Ryan became something to be called that, and Spencer watched it grow in a mix of burning pride and jealously. Ryan was still Ryan, so skittish and unsure, but Brendon knows gentle and patient better than most would give him credit for, and Spencer knew Ryan would be safe in his hands.

When Jon came, well. Fuck her if it didn't happen all over again like a bullet the first time Jon looked up at her and smiled down to his toes, touching her shoulder and making her feel it everywhere. 

Just like loving Brendon didn't, couldn't, make her love Ryan less, neither did finding herself helplessly loving Jon. It wouldn't make sense to most people, she knows, but it's the only thing that makes sense to her. They're her boys and she loves them. Takes care of them, defends them, makes sure they eat something other than jerky and Cheetos occasionally, plays and sleeps and eats and breathes with them.

She's not one of the boys and they've never made her feel like she has to be in order to be worthy, to fit. And she's been protecting Ryan so long it doesn't make sense for him to pull any sort of defensive bullshit with her in the scene. He knows she can take care of herself, they all do. So if there's an asshole at the club who actually notices there's a girl behind the drum kit, who gets beyond Ryan's slender hips and intricate make-up, Brendon's innuendo and Jon's lazy heat, the looks he extends to both Ryan and Brendon, if they get that far and take it upon themselves to heckle her on stage, or get into her space off of it, her guys know to step back and smile coolly, smugly like they know what's coming, because they do. Spencer has a tongue sharp enough to get her out of most situations, and a glare and set of fists, strong and fast from years of drumming, to take care of the rest. 

It's afterwards, on those occasions, that when she needs her boys, and they know that too. They swarm her after fights or particularly jeering crowds, cuddling close in a tangle of limbs, calling her a badass and being so ridiculously proud and sincere about it she never ends the night without a real smile on her face.

So she loves them, all of them, because they're hers, because they deserve it. It makes perfect fucking sense to her.

 

Somewhere in Illinois they break down, like they do. Brendon is driving, but immediately claims innocence.

"I was totally going the speed limit and all that shit. If the van breaks more often when I'm driving then not, it's because you guys are lazy fuckers who always want to sleep in the back instead of taking your turn." He huffs. "Don't you give me that look Ryan Ross. I am a safe and skilled driver, and that time I drove over a fallen case of beer on the highway could have happened to anybody. Anybody."

Ryan rolls his eyes, like he does, and wedges his bony little fingers into Spencer's ribs, causing her to yelp and then smack his hand. Undeterred, Ryan looks at her beseechingly. 

"You have to save us Spence." He says matter-of-factly.

She glares. "If you pussies would let me teach you how to do some of this shit, I wouldn't be the only one who has to leave the van in the middle of a fucking monsoon to fix our goddamn van."

Jon nods wisely. "You're very right about that." He puffs out smoke as he speaks. Ryan wrinkles his nose but holds his hands out, flexing his fingers towards the pipe. Jon hands it over and smiles at Spencer.

"Make us proud." Brendon pipes in, leaning around to give Spencer a go-get-em punch in the arm.

Ryan has moved closer to Jon, curling against his shoulder and sharing smoke, but he smiles a real smile, the kind Spencer'll do anything for. "When you come back think of how grateful we'll be."

Something twists in her gut, Ryan doesn't mean it like she wants him to mean it, he doesn't say things like that, think like that. But it gets her out of the van and on her back under it, banging around and figuring shit out well enough to get them going again just the same.

When they're back on the road, Ryan climbs over her so she can fit in the space between him and Jon. And between Ryan's head on her shoulder, Jon's hand on her knee and Brendon's singing her favorite Counting Crows song just the way she likes it sung, Spencer has to admit she feels pretty damn appreciated.

 

Things are normal and generally awesome until the day Spencer walks into the closet they've been given for a dressing room and finds Jon kissing Ryan on the lips. 

The LIPS. That's the important part, okay, because they all kiss each other sometimes, her and Ryan have been trading little kisses on foreheads and cheeks for years and when Brendon came in he was in on that like white on rice and then there was Jon and Jon was them so he did it too but this is different this is Jon's hands on Ryan's shoulders and his mouth on Ryan's lips and a soft surprised little sigh coming off Ryan's lips when Jon releases them.

Ryan's never kissed anyone that Spencer knows of and she would know. Not even Brendon, with the thing they have which is maybe a little more like dating than even what she and Ryan have. 

Jealously and loss and betrayal hit her in waves and she doesn't even tell herself it's crazy. That was hers. Ryan's first kiss, whenever that was, whenever he was ready for that - it was meant to be hers. Theirs. And she loves Jon. She loves him just as much and just the same as she loves Ryan, loves Brendon, but that was still supposed to belong to her and Ryan. Or she always thought so, always made herself believe it.

But now it's gone and it'll never be there for her to live for anymore, to work towards. She hasn't made a sound but she hasn't moved either and they're both staring at her now, Jon looking calm enough that she wants to punch him right in his serene fucking face, and Ryan looking shocked and guilty.

Fuck them both.

She wants to say something, to cut and dismiss and deflect, but her throat is too dry and constricted, so instead she simply turns on her heels and marches down the hall away from them.

She runs quite literally into Brendon and she tries to just push past him, but he catches her shoulders and says, "Hey whoa, no," and holds her there.

"Let the fuck go of me Brendon, or so help me I will make you." She's using her serious voice, the one he knows means she's not making idle threats.

He loosens his grip but doesn't step aside. 

"Brendon." Harshly delivered, clearly a threat.

He keeps in her space, face searching hers. Finally he nods. "I'll let you go, but I'm totally following you and you can just deal with it." Brendon has a serious face of his own.

She's seen it before, he uses it infrequently enough that she knows it's not to be taken lightly. Which would be fine, maybe, in other circumstances, but it really doesn't work for her right now because if he follows her he'll be there too long and she won't be able to hold back the burning sobs that are fighting to escape her throat.

The bastard probably knows it too.

He puts a careful hand on her arm, and actually starts to guide her out of the club with a gentle, "Come on, I'll buy you waffles."

Spencer fucking loves waffles.

 

They sit at the 24 Hour IHOP and Spencer cries over her waffles while Brendon holds her hand. He doesn't ask her what's wrong or who she's talking about when she sputters things like "motherfuckers" and "never mine after all." He doesn't let go of her hand either.

When she finally runs out of steam, Brendon is still there, looking at her with his big, loving eyes, smiling at her like she's beautiful.

"I'm okay." She says, squaring her shoulders.

He squeezes her hand. "You're Spencer."

 

They get back in time for sound check because Spencer is a fucking professional. A professional who lives in a van and is in love with her whole stupid gay band, but a professional nonetheless. 

The show is fine. It's not amazing, Ryan and Jon are off, and a part of Spencer is viciously pleased about this. She herself plays like a fucking whirlwind, she KILLS, she knows she does, so fuck them about that too. Brendon keeps up with her even if Ryan and Jon don't, so it evens out into fine. The crowd is okay, generally responsive and no one hurls insults, whether about Ryan's make up and attire or Spencer's gender, and they get off stage and back to the van without incident.

It's hard to ignore people in a van, but Spencer gives it the old college try anyway, headphones in her ears, her hood up, eyes closed.

Jon is riding up front with Brendon and Ryan is in the middle, so she has the back to herself and she's trying to enjoy it, to forget where she is or who she's with and it's almost working until Ryan climbs into the back with her and suddenly she has a lap full of poky elbows and knees. Before she even has time to think she shoves Ryan off her roughly, swearing. He doesn't have far to go, but slams up against the opposite window, face shocked and going white.

She's never hurt Ryan physically, not even by accident.

Her face burns with shame but she doesn't look at him, can't. Not even when he whispers, "Spence," low and pleading.

Instead she just turns up her music and stubbornly re-closes her eyes.

 

They're in between shows for the next two days, and end up staying with some friends of Jon's from high school who moved out to a farm to try and grow shit or whatever it is people do on farms. They're good guys, they've stayed with them before and best of all it's a big fucking property, so Spencer can leave for a walk at the beginning of the morning and stay gone all day. 

She's hiding out on a half broken tire swing hung from an Oak at the south edge of the farm, swinging mechanically and trying to get herself to a place where she can deal with this being the reality of her life, deal with not ever having Ryan the way she'd always told herself she would. Or even did. Giving up the dream of him is one thing, maybe she could handle it better if it was just that. But to lose him the way she already thought she had him too, on top of that and at the same time. Jesus.

She's about to cry again, motherfucker, she hasn't cried since junior high until this bullshit, when she sees a figure that can't be anyone but Jon approaching. She wants to, she seriously considers it even, but ultimately, she doesn't run away. She also doesn't pick up the stick lying on the ground at her feet and throw it at Jon. But she wants that too.

Jon, for once, doesn't look calm. He doesn't look relaxed and loose and happy. She'd almost be proud if it didn't look so wrong. Didn't twist at her gut and make her want to cry all over again for a different set of hurts. 

"Hey," he says, a careful opener.

She glares at the ground. 

"Spence." He tries softly.

"I'll get over it." She hisses finally.

She doesn't look up, but she hears his step backwards in the crunch of leaves it makes on the ground.

"Just back the fuck off and give me a few days, okay? Call off Ryan while you're at it." She shudders a sigh. "And tell him I'm sorry I pushed him. I shouldn't have done that."

Jon clears his throat, and she looks up finally, in time to see him wave his hands around, looking lost.

"I wish I knew what the hell you were thinking." Jon says at last.

She shakes her head, allowing anger to resurface. "Fuck you."

Jon looks pained, genuinely confused, and she deflates once more. "Please." She says weakly. "Just leave me alone and I promise I can make myself okay with it. I can be what you need me to be. I can be happy for you guys and proud of you and..." She breaks off, choking back a scream. Screaming comes easier than crying to her, even now. "If you're happy I can be good with whatever. I just need a little while to get used to it. Please Jon."

"Spence," he murmurs, walking closer. "What do you think you saw? What do you think you're getting yourself used to?"

She blinks at him, some mix of horror and surprise. Is he actually going to make her spell it out? Go through that, on top of everything else?

"You." She shakes her head. "You and Ryan and fuck... is it Brendon too? Does he know? Because he loves Ryan, you know that right? You can't just... you shouldn't." She stops again, too overwhelmed, too angry and sad and lost to finish.

"We all love Ryan." Is what Jon eventually comes up with.

Spencer laughs, choked and bitter. Nothing but true.

"Yeah well."

Jon is all the way into her space now, close enough to touch. She thinks she might hit him if he tries it. Her face probably shows it, but his hand comes up and cups her jaw anyway, and she doesn't actually punch him. Doesn't even want to. She just closes her eyes instead and tries to memorize the feel of his hands. She resolves this will be the last time she lets him touch her. Lets any of them. She can't go on the way they'd been, not when she's on the outside of it like she's finally realized she is.

"Spencer, it's not what you think." Jon is saying, trying to get her to look at him.

She shakes out of his touch, untangles herself from the tire swing and stands facing him, hands on her hips.

"What do I think?" She challenges him as boldly as she can. 

He shakes his head, slow and sad. "You think there isn't a place for you left. You think we don't love you. God Spencer. That we don't want you."

She's not going to fucking cry again. She's not.

"I'm not going to quit the band or anything. I'm a grown up. I'm still. I'm still Ryan's best friend." No one can take that away from her. No one. 

Jon looks distinctly less than reassured by this.

"You're more than just that." He argues softly.

She sighs. "No I'm not."

When she walks away, Jon doesn't try to follow her.

 

 

I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU!!! Screams Spencer's brain voice when she returns to the house and the first thing she finds is Ryan, Brendon and Jon crammed tightly together on the faded floral love-seat, heads bent together, foreheads touching, whispering to each other.

Andy and Joe are bickering in the kitchen, and it smells like apples and cinnamon. 

Hearing her come in, Ryan's head jerks up and he starts to get up, mouth open and eyes desperate, but Jon holds him down, and Brendon too, keeps an arm around him.

Spencer never believed they would be so cruel. Can't make sense of any of it in her head.

She turns to head into the kitchen, away from them, but Jon's voice stops her. 

"Come here." It's the closest thing to an order she's ever heard him give.

She finds herself obeying without her conscious control.

She makes herself stand tall and proud, schools her features to stony neutrality before them. She tries to look past them at the wall behind their heads, but Ryan makes a sound like a whimper and her eyes snap to his.

Even with Jon's hand on his knee and Brendon's arm around his shoulders, Ryan's heart is breaking in his eyes.

She doesn't know how to make sense of that either.

Says the only thing she can think of to try to make the look in Ryan's eyes go away, "I love you Ryan."

There's no holding him back this time, and Brendon and Jon don't even try. She's expecting one of Ryan's trademark bony hugs, expecting him to collapse against her, forgiven, and that will be that. She'll let him go and they'll be alright with each other, still friends, the best of friends, and that will be enough.

Instead she gets his hands, angry and unsure, pushing at her chest, shoving her like a challenge, gets his face, flushed and eyes narrowed, right up in hers.

"What did I do to make you think I didn't love you? Fuck, Spence. You're the only one I've ever been able to really show. What the fuck did I do?" He's yelling.

Ryan never yells.

She takes a shocked step backward. Brendon and Jon are staring at her, not surprised, not confused, just sad, resigned. It doesn't make any fucking sense.

"You kissed Jon." If she has to spell it out in front of all of them, with Andy and Joe in earshot, fine. "You want JON." She waves a hand. "You want Brendon and you want Jon and okay. I can live with that, Ryan, I can. I'm sorry I wanted more than what you have for me, I'm sorry I let myself think there was a place for me in this. I thought you weren't ready, that you were waiting, that we were all just... I thought we were building to something together but I was wrong. I was so fucking wrong and living in my own fucking dream world and all this time... the three of you. Fuck. How did I miss that? How did I stop myself from seeing? I just... I can get over it, okay, I will, but you just have to let me do that on my own, you have to give me time to deal with it. You know I fucking hate being wrong."

A stunned silence follows her outburst. She wonders if she'll ever be able to smell cinnamon without feeling like crying.

Finally Brendon gets up off the couch and takes Ryan's wrist in his hand, tugs him gently away, out of Spencer's reach. Ryan looks tiny and frail against Brendon's chest, where he buries himself.

Jon cracks his knuckles and sighs. "You're pretty fucking wrong alright."

A noise comes out of Ryan like a laugh. Brendon strokes his hair and Spencer watches, trapped in how desperately she wishes it was her. Either one of them.

"I'm sorry." She almost can't believe she's the one saying it, but she is, so she says it all the same.

"Be sorry for the right fucking thing or don't be sorry at all." Brendon retorts harshly.

She's even less used to that tone from him than Jon. She gapes at him and doesn't speak.

"Ask Ryan what he does every night once you're asleep." Brendon commands.

She blinks. "Ryan?"

Ryan takes his face from Brendon's neck, looks at her steadily. "I kiss you. I wait until you're asleep and then I kiss your perfect fucking mouth, I wait for it all goddamn day, every single day. Because I'm not brave enough, okay Spence, I admit it. Because I'm not brave enough to try it in the day time, because I know you'll let me but maybe not for the right reasons and I couldn't ever handle losing everything else we have, not even for that. But they see, alright? It's not like it's just the two of us anymore so of course they see. And Brendon... he's tried to get me to talk to you, tried to get me to be brave, and he's so good," he squeezes Brendon's hand, "So good, and I want to be brave like him but it's hard. Spence, do you know how you make it hard? We have to be so careful, loving you. So careful not to make you feel coddled, or given special treatment when all we want is to treat you like you really are - so fucking special Spencer. All of us. We love you." He shakes his head. "We love you and we love each other and THAT is what's going on, okay? That and me being too fucking scared to do anything about it, to trust, and Jon finally knowing me well enough to see I'm not going to start things on my own, seeing I needed him to show me what brave can feel like, what it can taste like."

Spencer is reeling, her brain racing furiously, trying to decipher his words.

What she finally settles on is, "What?"

Jon laughs. "We love you. You asshole."

"But..."

"And we want you. Fuck, Spence, have you SEEN yourself?" Brendon.

"Have you HEARD yourself?" Ryan.

"All of us Spence. Nothing else makes sense." Jon.

"Nothing else means what it should." Brendon.

"Please." Ryan. Always Ryan.

Apparently understanding you're the stupidest and most oblivious person in the world is a lot easier on the heart when you're getting everything you've ever fucking wanted instead of having that taken away.

"First kiss?" She finds herself asking of Ryan helplessly, before anything else.

He fucking beams at her, and it's pretty much worth the embarrassment that flushes her cheeks. 

"Had to be."

She doesn't know much else, but she knows what comes next. "I'm sorry I'm such a dense asshole." She makes sure to look at Brendon as she says this.

He smiles wide and forgiving. "It's possible you're not the only one in the room."

Jon gets up and that makes four, all standing together in the living room of slightly militant level five vegans, declaring their dumbass polygamous love for each other.

Jon closes the circle and everyone has a hand to hold. "This better mean we're finally all allowed to have sex with each other," he says, with a cheerfully wolfish grin.

Spencer throws her head back and laughs, feeling light and happy like she'd almost come to believe she never would again, these last few days.

"Jon Walker, just what kind of girl to you think I am?"

He smiles at her, smug and proud, and when she looks at Ryan and Brendon, they'll looking at her the same way.

"My girl." Jon says, in a voice almost reverent.

Ryan and Brendon, on opposite sides, squeeze her hand, saying together, "Our girl."

No arguing with that.


End file.
